M-EID Events and Announcements

M-EID Speaker - Dr. Andrew Nevai - Spatial Patterns in a Family of Epidemic Models

Dr. Andrew Nevai uses mathematical approaches to address problems that arise in biology. Recently, his work has centered on three main areas of theoretical ecology: competition between species (plant competition for sunlight, interactions at multiple spatial scales, directed movement along resource gradients, and structured resources), the spatial spread of epidemic diseases (rabies and others), and the evolution of optimal choice (state-based decision-making in foraging gray jays, the honeybee nest-site selection process, and animal-mediated seed dispersal). Dr. Nevai is also interested in species persistence and permanence within ecological communities; the dynamics of spatially (or otherwise) structured populations; classical and social foraging theory; animal and plant behavior; and formulating ecological models that make use of mechanistic reasoning and principles.

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M-EID Forum

M-EID NEW Small Grants Program

Guidelines for M-EID's new Small Grants Program are now available at M-EID Web Site. Trainees may apply for grants of up to $2,500, and proposals may be submitted at any time.

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Departmental Events

Math Colloquium - Dr. Andrew Nevai - Spatial problems in mathematical ecology

In this talk, I will introduce two spatial problems in theoretical ecology together with their mathematical solutions.

The first part of the talk concerns competition between plants for sunlight. In it, I use a mechanistic Kolmogorov-type competition model to connect plant population vertical leaf profiles (or VLPs) to the asymptotic behavior of the resulting dynamical system. For different VLPs, conditions can be obtained for either competitive exclusion to occur or stable coexistence at one or more equilibrium points.

The second part of the talk concerns the spatial spread of infectious diseases. Here, I use a family of SI-type models to examine the ability of a disease, such as rabies, to invade or persist in a spatially heterogeneous habitat. I will discuss properties of the disease-free equilibrium and the behavior of the endemic equilibrium as the mobility of healthy individuals becomes very small relative to that of infecteds. The family of disease models consists variously of systems of difference equations (which I will emphasize), ODEs, and reaction-diffusion equations.

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IMB Seminar

Sonja Best - Rocky Mountain Laboratories - "Tick-borne flaviviruses put the bite on interferon."

OBE Seminar

Marnie Rout - "The role of plant-soil-microbial interactions in plant invasions."

WBIO Seminar

Martin Wikelski - Princeton University - Topic TBA.

Upcoming Conferences -

Climate, Environment, and Infectious Diseases

The 2008 annual meeting of the American Institute of Biological Sciences will be held 12 and 13 May on the theme of "Climate, Environment, and Infectious Diseases," at the Westin Hotel in Arlington, Virginia. The program chair is 2008 AIBS President Rita Colwell, University of Maryland, College Park.

Interrelationships of climate, environment, and human health are manifested in infectious disease patterns, notably seasonality. Vector borne diseases, such as malaria, dengue, Avian influenza, SARS, and related diseases are known to be closely linked to the environment and, more recently, to climate. Interactions between climate, climate change, and the environment have been studied extensively by investigators in the United States and abroad. The AIBS annual meeting will address these issues.

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SIAM Conference on the Life Sciences

The life sciences have become increasingly quantitative as new technologies facilitate collection and analysis of vast amounts of data ranging from complete genomic sequences of organisms to satellite imagery of forest landscapes on continental scales. As a consequence, mathematics and computational science have become crucial technologies for the study of complex models of biological processes.

The SIAM Activity Group on Life Sciences brings together researchers who seek to develop and apply mathematical and computational methods in all areas of the life sciences. This conference of the activity group will provide a cross-disciplinary forum for catalyzing mathematical research relevant to the life sciences. It will facilitate rapid diffusion of new mathematical and computational methods in the life sciences, and may stimulate more researchers to work in these important areas. Mathematicians, life scientists, computational biologists, bioengineers and others interested in mathematical and computational analysis of biological systems are encouraged to attend.

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Society for Mathematical Biology Conference

Hosted by the Centre for Mathematical Medicine (CMM). This is one of the premier conferences on mathematics in biology and the biomedical sciences. This conference will integrate into the activities of the Fields Thematic Program on Mathematical and Quantitative Oncology with Cancer being one of the major themes of the conference. The themes for the meeting will include:

• Immunology
• Epidememiology
• Cancer Modeling
• Cancer Therapies
• Systems Biology
• Ecology
• Developmental Biology
• Cell Biology
• Environmental and Evolutionary Biology
• Imaging
• Neuroscience
• Physiology
• Genomics
• Undergraduate Education

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